joe haggerty

Ramirez regains magic touch

There was a time in the middle of the marathon baseball season when Ramon Ramirez might just have felt a bit lost amid the talented arms in a stacked Boston bullpen.

After posting a 1.38 ERA in his first 24 games with the Sox, Ramirez logged progressively declining months, culminating with an August to forget. Ramirez watched his ERA for the month spike up to 4.15, and his other numbers take a tumble. The former Kansas City Royals setup man was touched up for 16 hits and a pair of homers in 13 innings of work and walked 10 batters. Worse still, he was beginning to falter in big moments for the Sox.

Daniel Bard adopted more of a prominent role in the mid- to late innings, and a trade for Billy Wagner placed another quality power arm within a competitive bullpen situation.

Ramirez was beginning to appear as something of an odd man out, or at least a forgotten entity in those crucial late innings. For a pitcher who enjoys pitching when the game is on the line, it was a challenge to share the crucial innings with so many other talented arms thriving in the AL’s best bullpen.

“He wants to be ‘The Guy,’ ” Sox pitching coach John Farrell said. “He wants to be thought of when matchups or game-planning are taking place, and he wants to be in the mix. He’s a fierce competitor, and that naturally draws him to the game and those opportunities.”

Spurred originally by the trade that shipped reliever Justin Masterson to the Indians on July 31, things are sorting themselves out for the Boston relief corps. Ramirez is once again pitching with regularity and entering the mix for prime-time opportunities, with each and every late September game gaining in importance.

“Confidence and consistency, they go hand in hand,” Farrell said. “He’s been overall very consistent for us. He’s harnessed that adrenaline and been a very stable and consistent performer for us over the course of the year.

“He loves to throw the baseball. The [relievers] all think about where they are and how they slot into the bullpen, and — when you get a sense that you’re moving up a slot — start to get some added responsibility in your role, that’s a confidence-booster in and of itself.”

The innings and opportunities are more plentiful again for the 28-year-old Dominican, and he’s once again rising to the occasion.

After starting the month of September taking a loss in an outing that went haywire when Ramirez’s two inherited runners scored during a Manny Delcarmen meltdown, the righty was dominant with his 95 mph fastball and tantalizing changeup in back-to-back important appearances against the Orioles and the Angels.

The performance against the O’s was perhaps most impressive: Ramirez extinguished a bases-loaded one-out fire started by Delcarmen in the sixth inning of a tight ballgame, and he reared back to fan Nolan Reimold and the always-dangerous Nick Markakis in back-to-back at-bats to extricate himself from a potentially damaging situation.

Even more impressive was the fact that Ramirez’s stuff was so pure in Tuesday night’s scoreless inning despite five days of idle time between his last two successful bullpen appearances. The 28-year-old righty looks as sharp as he has all season, and has regained the hop in his fastball and deceptive arm speed for his change. The electricity is back in the right arm of Ramirez, who seemed without peer earlier in the season.

“He’s been unbelievable,” said Bard, who has nurtured a bond with Ramirez as they share adjoining lockers in the Sox clubhouse. “You talk about being fresh in September, he’s throwing as hard as he has all year and he’s been locating. He’s still got that great changeup.

“Anytime you can get to the point where you’re putting up that kind of consistency, it makes it that much easier for a manager to throw [a pitcher] into a game. You know that you’re getting in [to the game], and that goes for anybody. It breeds confidence when you start getting put into those important situations.”

Ramirez locked up his 11th hold of the year in the win over the Angels Tuesday night at the Fens, and effectively stymied the Halos offense before passing the game on to Bard, Wagner and Papelbon in the last two innings.

If there was a blueprint to playoff victories for the Red Sox this fall, the Boston pitchers had it Tuesday night vs. their likely ALDS foe.

“Tonight was a pretty good display of some quality stuff,” Farrell said of the bullpen’s dominant close-out performance over the final three frames.

Count on six or seven solid innings from the starting pitcher, and then bury the opposition under the weight of an endless array of power arms with stuff so filthy that it makes the Nasty Boys look like Girl Scouts. There isn’t a flashy moniker for this Sox bullpen as of yet, but Ramirez is again making a name for himself with some important games during proving time in September.

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